Medieval city

Author: Henri Pirenne (Belgium)/Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: If you look down on the Roman Empire, the first strong impression you get is its Mediterranean nature. The empire's territory hardly exceeded the coastal areas of the inland lake it surrounded on all sides. The distant regions of the Rhine, Danube, Euphrates, and Sahara formed a vast defensive circle around the Mediterranean. There is no doubt that the Mediterranean was the guarantee of the political and economic unity of the Roman Empire. The existence of the empire depended on its control over the sea. Without this important transportation line, the management and supply of the Roman world would have been impossible. As the empire gradually aged, its maritime characteristics became more prominent, and it is interesting to note this. The inland capital of the empire, Rome, was abandoned in the 4th century, replaced by a city that was both the capital and a good port—Constantinople. Indeed, from the late 3rd century, the civilization of the empire showed undeniable signs of decline: population decline; weakening of power; barbarian threats to the borders; the government struggling for its own survival, increasing expenditures, leading to tax exploitation and making the people increasingly subject to the state. However, this decline did not seem to significantly harm Mediterranean shipping. The Mediterranean remained active, contrasting with the gradually stagnant inland provinces. The Mediterranean continued to keep the east and west connected. The exchange of processed products or natural products between such vastly different regions, all bathed in the same sea, did not stop: textiles from Constantinople, Edessa, Antioch, and Alexandria; wine, oil, and spices from Syria; papyrus from Egypt; wheat from Egypt, Africa, and Spain; and wine from Gaul and Italy. The reform of the gold-based solidus currency system under Constantine may have even greatly promoted commercial activity, as the reform benefited trade by allowing the use of an excellent currency, which was widely used as a medium of exchange and a means of expressing prices. Between the two major regions of the empire—the east and the west—the east was not only more civilized but also economically far more active, far surpassing the west. After the 4th century, there were no longer any truly large cities except in the east. It was also in the east that export industries, particularly textile industries, were concentrated in Syria and Asia Minor, with the Roman world being the market for these industries, and Syrian ships responsible for transportation. The commercial dominance of the Syrians was undoubtedly one of the striking facts of the later Roman Empire. The commercial advantage of the Syrians must have greatly contributed to the gradual orientalization of the society that might eventually become Byzantine. This orientalization mediated by the sea clearly shows that as the aging empire gradually weakened under the pressure of barbarians, retreating from the north, and increasingly contracting to the Mediterranean coast, the importance of the Mediterranean grew. P1-2